Apple announced on Monday that it has acquired Texture, a subscription based digital magazine platform. The acquisition is seen to help the Cupertino-based company bolster its news distribution platform Apple News. At South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Apple SVP Eddy Cue confirmed that Texture will integrate with Apple News, and improve the app’s curation […]

Apple announced on Monday that it has acquired Texture, a subscription based digital magazine platform. The acquisition is seen to help the Cupertino-based company bolster its news distribution platform Apple News.

At South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Apple SVP Eddy Cue confirmed that Texture will integrate with Apple News, and improve the app’s curation capabilities. The move comes as Facebook moves away from news distribution to focus on better connecting people. The Texture app is known commonly as Netflix for magazines, and it gives readers access to over 200 magazines at $9.99 per month.

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“We’re excited Texture will join Apple, along with an impressive catalog of magazines from many of the world’s leading publishers,” said Cue. “We are committed to quality journalism from trusted sources and allowing magazines to keep producing beautifully designed and engaging stories for users.”

This is the second major acquisition for Apple in the last six month after it acquired Shazam for $400 million in December last year. Apple has not revealed the terms of this deal, but it is estimated to have raised $130 million from KKR, News Corp, Hearst among others. “I’m thrilled that Next Issue Media, and its award-winning Texture app, are being acquired by Apple,” said John Loughlin, CEO of Next Issue Media / Texture.

Apple promised to offer an outstanding magazine experience with Newsstand but it has since turned out to be a flop. There are possibilities that Texture will transform into Newsstand at a later stage.

At the investor call in February, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed that the company acquired 19 companies last year and it is after quality and not quantity. Cue added that it wants to continue distributing others’ apps and with Texture, Apple stands to strengthen its Services business.

Apple announced that it made $8.4 billion in revenue from Services business at the end of fiscal 2018 first quarter. The revenue from Services business is more than that from sales of iPad and Mac products and the new acquisition will only strengthen that division which is becoming a Fortune 500 company in its own respect. Besides the announcement, Cue also told attendees at SXSW why it won’t buy big companies like Netflix or Disney and that Apple Music now has 38 million subscribers.